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Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Beginning your search for your Swedish Roots with Rötter

I have found that even among experienced genealogists doing research in specific countries, that they are often not aware of the resources available to them merely because of the language barrier. A good example of this is the fact that nearly every country in Europe and many other places around the world, has a formally organized genealogical society and in many countries in Europe there are huge dedicated genealogy websites. As I look at lists and recommendations by researchers here in the English speaking world, I seldom see references to these helpful websites.

Here is one such website that may be new to you. It was certainly new to one Swedish researchers who had been active in doing Swedish research for years. It is called simply "Rötter," or Roots. Here is a screenshot of the startup page:

If you click on this image and look at the top of the page where the big red arrow points, you will see something interesting. Google will automatically translate the text on the page into your language. This, of course, means that you can read most of the page in English. Here is another screenshot of the page once Google has translated the text portions of the page. Remember, Google cannot translate images.

On this website, there is a wonderful section on getting started with Swedish research. I think that we spend so much time with our "time tested" resources, we fail to spend much effort finding out what is unknown to us that may help with our learning and research. Here is the translation of the getting started page in a screenshot:

Now, guest what? There are similar websites, as I already stated, for almost every single European country.